Class Notes

Class Notes for 1947

Arline Kiessling Wills sent happy 200th birthday wishes to Colby. She and husband Charlie are still coming down to breakfast, she writes, “not running but maneuvering without canes or walkers. As survivors, we’re happy to report that we’re healthy and active, still able to take some good annual trips, mainly to France and around the States. Our four kids are properly attentive, themselves nearing Social Security age, the seven grands are all working, and we have two precious greats. Though I had the benefit of a Colby education, none of ours has opted for it (foolish they!), turning in other directions, one now at Harvard and her sister at the University of Chicago. Life is good.” * David Weber has been working on some early history of a Colby professor who, for 30 years, was head of the Department of English. He writes, “Carl Jefferson Weber (CJW) became a Colby English professor in March 1919, after finishing graduate study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar during 1915-1917—those academic obligations only intervened by his one year of World War I military service. Why does this create a mystery near a hundred years later? Turns out that CJW had created an album of his photographs during those Oxford years. This album of near 100 leaves filled with photographs recently mysteriously came in Kentucky to the Camp Zachary Taylor Historical Society. Sending a disc with half the photos, the Society historian asked the Weber family to identify faces, places, and assign dates to photos, which included shots at Oxford, the Swiss Alps, CJW rowing with his Oxford college team, and a formal CJW portrait when at Oxford. By chance CJW had written his family detailed letters during those same years, … . So the challenge now was finding events in the latter to enlighten the former. Could the link be found between hundreds of unnamed photos to the hundreds of letters? A needle in one haystack with DNA of another needle in another haystack? Hours of tedious matching effort, and at last the success was quite striking, to the satisfaction of both parties. It has been very rewarding to me to clarify this personal bit of Colby history.”